Pumpkin & birthday cake

It was our new friend Kara’s birthday over Halloween weekend and Sara was in town so we decided to host a birthday dinner and get these North American friends to guide us in carving our pumpkin … wasn’t sure I would right up until the last minute because it was still perfectly round and orange and I couldn’t bear the thought of cutting into it. But we did. We had a ridiculous little plastic pumpkin carving set on the front of a kids’ Halloween stencil book – something Jif had suggested and I thought might be safer than wielding the big kitchen knives – turns out that while it was quite hard work and required a fair amount of sawing that the vicious little jagged blade on the knife was way more effective than a kitchen knife. We took it in turns but The Mister did most of it under the guidance of the experienced girls while I prepared a very orange dinner – kumara, feta & bacon salad (with the orange cherry tomatoes) and carrot cake.

The pumpkin turned out great and looked awesome glowing out on our deck.